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User: Nethead

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Comments · 2,189

  1. Re:I'm Okay With It on Ask Slashdot: Tech Customers Forced Into Supporting Each Other? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I love on-line support chats. HP is really good at this (okay, I'm a business customer with a few hundred desktops and a rack of servers, YMMV.) Chat allows me to cut-n-paste serial numbers or diag info directly to them. It allows me to get other work done while support is processing the request, and I'm sure it allows support to work other cases when I have to dig for info.

    The main thing is that I don't have to work through understanding the accent of a non-native speaker. The support folks are often bright and knowledgeable but my internal wiring doesn't always make the translation the first try. This gets old quickly for both ends of the conversation.

  2. Re:a future filled with black tape on Google Foresees Ads On Your Refrigerator, Thermostat, and Glasses · · Score: 1

    Or just an LM339 comparator chip and a cap or two for hysteresis.

  3. Re:a future filled with black tape on Google Foresees Ads On Your Refrigerator, Thermostat, and Glasses · · Score: 1

    Sure, until display tech gets so cheap that even dollar store duct tape has moving ads on it. Good luck then, brother!

  4. Re:Author is missing the point entirely on The Sci-Fi Myth of Robotic Competence · · Score: 1

    Exactly. The car doesn't even know what a person is other than maybe "that other system that sometimes moves the car."

  5. Re:Usual story, nothing to see here? on Radioactivity Cleanup At Hanford Nuclear Reservation, 25 Years On · · Score: 1

    Exactly. There is fuck else to do in the Tri-Cities but farm, and if you don't speak Spanish, you can't get hired for even that. Without the cleanup Richland and Kennewick will look like Pasco. It's not a cleanup, it's a jobs program to keep Doc Hastings in the 4th.

  6. Re:It's one of many reasons why Adblocking is mora on Malvertising Up By Over 200% · · Score: 1

    I'm doing the same thing for work builds now. Because the Boeing and Airbus catalogs require IE8 or less I've taken the E off of the taskbar and put Firefox in with an adblocker. They have to click on the desktop icon that will take them to the exact site. Our GPO only lets IE visit the sites that we have vetted, and most of those are password protected sites to other vendors and manufacturers.

    Since rolling out that image I've had quite a few cow-orkers ask how to adblock at home. I'm only too glad to show them.

  7. Re:It's one of many reasons why Adblocking is mora on Malvertising Up By Over 200% · · Score: 4, Informative

    Or is this site supported by the Bandwidth Pixies?

    At one point, yes. I was one of them. I worked at an ISP and we gave Rob Malda a Pentium Linux box (slackware, IIRC) to host images.slashdot.org when his T1 started getting full. We gave Slashdot free hosting and bandwidth for about 2-3 years, until he moved on to other servers.

  8. Re:It is God. on Supermassive Black Hole At the Centre of Galaxy May Be Wormhole In Disguise · · Score: 4, Funny

    Let's burn it!

  9. Re:Here's a better idea on Do Embedded Systems Need a Time To Die? · · Score: 1

    You just gave every lawyer a giant woody, even the ladies.

  10. Re:Negative accidents on Traffic Optimization: Cyclists Should Roll Past Stop Signs, Pause At Red Lights · · Score: 1

    After Washington jacked up the taxes on booze I would think that would mean stopping to pick up a fifth.

    Go Cougs!

  11. Re:Simple on Eavesdropping With a Smart TV · · Score: 1

    Exactly. Show me another way I can watch Masterchef Australia in the US (which is produced by Murdock's wife's company, Shine, but still the best of the Masterchef shows.) Most of our viewing is BBC, CBC or PBS. I could get my PBS with an antenna (I donate each year) and if I put up another high gain yagi pointing northwestish I should be able to pull in CBC from Victoria to grab Doc Zone, but why bother? The few US show that I watch are streamed anyway so I'm just saving them bandwidth.

    You could bust me for Hot in Cleveland but I haven't found a way to send TV-Land money for that yet. Oh, and Deadliest Catch. But since one of the deckhands burnt down a friends house while shooting up and we had to give him a room for six months, I think that one is paid for. (Looking at you Matt.)

    Anyway, my ISP is owned by an American Native Sovereign Tribal Government. Good luck sending them a letter.
    Ok, I've about run out of justification here. But as far as felony theft , I've been busted for that back in 1987 (18USC1029). Millions of dollars of long distance calling on Sprint. (did it with a C64) and did 6 years in Club Fed. These days offering unlimited long distance for $100/month would just get you laughed out of the room. I've got a $6/month VoIP line that gives me that, not to speak of the four cell lines I pay under $100/month for. I hope in the not too distant future that we can get the show we want without having to pay for the whole package. Give us the infrastructure and let us pay for and download what show we want to pay for. I'd be more that happy with that.

    Until then, well, I'm a felon... again.

  12. Re:Simple on Eavesdropping With a Smart TV · · Score: 1

    Computer LCD screen, old Core2 box running Mint Linux, set of old speakers with sub-woofer, VLC, thepiratebay for content. Has served our house well for the last two years.

  13. WTF is Bootstrap? on Book Review: Extending Bootstrap · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

    Bootstrap is a free collection of tools for creating websites and web applications. It contains HTML and CSS-based design templates for typography, forms, buttons, navigation and other interface components, as well as optional JavaScript extensions. It is the No.1 project on GitHub with 65,000+ stars and 23,800 forks (as of March 2014) and has been used by NASA and MSNBC, among many others

    So it's not how to get your 8080 to see the 8250 UART so you can load a Microsoft BASIC from paper tape from your Model 33 ASR.

  14. Re:All I read from the summary is on Book Review: Extending Bootstrap · · Score: 1

    Hah! Fancy toggle switches. We had momentary contact switches for both the data bus and the address bus. Took three hearty men and a coxswain to load the code for the paper-tape reader. One man on the data bus, two on the address bus (though the man on the most significant byte had it pretty easy) and the coxswain would call out the bits and hit the load button. One year our team loaded a 3548 byte moon lander program in just under three minutes and twelve seconds. Made state finals that year only to be bested by a nine man team that touched pull-down resistors directly to the CPU pins. Boy those guys had dainty but quick fingers.

  15. Re:Another valuable investment of tax payer dollar on FCC Proposes $48,000 Fine To Man Jamming Cellphones On Florida Interstate · · Score: 1

    They do, but they have been know to be incorrectly installed and go into a feedback loop.

  16. Re:You just died. on FCC Proposes $48,000 Fine To Man Jamming Cellphones On Florida Interstate · · Score: 1

    Crappy drum brakes and overpowered engines. Non-radial tires.

    How are we even alive?

  17. Re:Another valuable investment of tax payer dollar on FCC Proposes $48,000 Fine To Man Jamming Cellphones On Florida Interstate · · Score: 1

    Sorry, Bi-Directional Amplifier. A signal booster.

    http://www.wilsonelectronics.c...

  18. Re:Another valuable investment of tax payer dollar on FCC Proposes $48,000 Fine To Man Jamming Cellphones On Florida Interstate · · Score: 1

    It sounds like it could have been a BDA gone into a regeneration loop. Not that uncommon.

  19. Re:You just died. on FCC Proposes $48,000 Fine To Man Jamming Cellphones On Florida Interstate · · Score: 2

    True, but cars were much more dangerous back then. Looking at you old Fury III with bench seats, 383 and no belts.

  20. Re:Are there any old drives around that read these on US Nuclear Missile Silos Use Safe, Secure 8" Floppy Disks · · Score: 1

    Got an 8" Turbo Pascal disk hanging on the wall of my office.

  21. Western Electric on Ask Slashdot: What Tech Products Were Built To Last? · · Score: 1

    Well, anything by them but specifically the Model 500 telephone set.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

    63 years old and still works just like it came out of the factory. The only maintenance is a bit of cleaning with soapy water and tapping the microphone against something hard every few years to pack the carbon granules.

    Also remarkable is that it will still work on just about any phone system in the world. That's a long lasting communication standard.

    Another great line of products were pre-1990 Motorola two way radios. They were build almost as well as the WE stuff.

  22. Re:They've got a lot of catching up to do... on Is Germany Raising a Generation of Illiterates? · · Score: 1

    But then there are the stars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

    Kassahun Tsegie was born in 1970 in Ethiopia. His mother died in a tuberculosis epidemic when he was three years old. He and his elder sister, were subsequently adopted by Ann Marie and Lennart Samuelsson, a homemaker.

  23. Re:Bugs? on CSIRO Scientists' Aquaculture Holy Grail: Fish-Free Prawn Food · · Score: 1

    Hell, give me that on a ball of rice with some wasabi, let me dip it in soy, I'll eat it. Google knows that I've eaten worse and stranger, and paid good money for it.

  24. Re:Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra on Indie Game Jam Show Collapses Due To Interference From "Pepsi Consultant" · · Score: 1

    The opposite of "Heads down, bums up."

  25. Re:And, there could be a notice: on If Ridesharing Is Banned, What About Ride-Trading? · · Score: 1

    But Washington State has laws on who can sell weed and what the tax is.